ROJ CAMP, Syria — Roj is a fenced, isolated detention camp in the Kurdish-held northeast of Syria that houses wives and children of Islamic State fighters. The site is a quiet, desolate place where children ride bicycles between tattered tents, a reminder that the humanitarian toll here is concentrated on the young: about 60% of the roughly 2,300 residents are children, Save the Children says.
The camp’s population is almost entirely foreign nationals from nearly 60 countries. Most of the adults are women; many of the men who fought for ISIS were killed or imprisoned after the group’s last territorial defeat in 2019. Those captured in the final battles in Baghuz were held by Kurdish-led forces, and their families were detained in camps such as al-Hol and Roj.
In January, fighting and a shifting security landscape across northeastern Syria — including the withdrawal of some U.S. forces and advances by elements of the Syrian government — created openings that allowed many militants to flee camps and jails. Syrian authorities closed al-Hol in February; its residents either escaped or were moved. Kurdish officials say the instability has coincided with a resurgence of ISIS activity in parts of the region.
Roj, however, has remained under Kurdish control. Chavare Afrin, the head of camp security, says residents of other facilities believed they’d be rescued by forces aligned with the new Syrian government and packed to leave. “They told us that before they leave they were going to behead all the security people,” she says, describing threats she says were made against Kurdish guards. Afrin says Roj was not breached in the same way as al-Hol because it sits in a Kurdish-majority area and lacks the surrounding Arab villages that helped some residents escape elsewhere.
Among those detained at Roj are a few high-profile foreign women. Hoda Muthana, 31, who was born in New Jersey and traveled to Syria in 2014, is one of three women the camp identifies as American detainees. Muthana, whose U.S. citizenship was later revoked by the government, describes fear and desperation. “I’m struggling a lot. I’m really scared for my situation, for my son’s situation as well,” she says. She says she would try to help de-radicalize young people if allowed to return to the United States.
Not all the women say they joined ISIS willingly. Some insist they were trafficked, deceived, or lured to the region. Camp officials say a portion of the women embraced the ideology and passed it on to their children, while others regret being there and want repatriation and due process.
A group of Australian women and children briefly managed to leave Roj in February after obtaining passports, but were turned back at a Syrian government checkpoint and returned to the camp. Mila Ibrahim, co-chair of the camp administration, says the departures were permitted on humanitarian grounds because the travelers had documentation. One woman, who declined to give her name on legal advice, recalled taking her children out at night and driving toward a new life, only to be stopped and sent back. She described her daughter, born in the camp, gasping for “sweet” air when she saw a house for the first time, then being forced to explain why they had to return.
The camp depends almost entirely on aid, but assistance has been disrupted — USAID cut funding last year, and fighting this February further hampered deliveries. Basic services are limited. NPR was granted just two hours inside Roj and could not visit the section that authorities say holds the more radicalized women and children.
Education inside the camp is informal and fragile. During a recent visit in Ramadan many women rested; others attempted to home-school children without books or internet. Mothers described trying to shelter their children from extremist ideas taught by others in the camp. One little girl proudly ran out with a painting that said “Hello friends” on the back, an ordinary child’s gesture amid extraordinary circumstances.
As detainees age, some older teenage boys have been moved out of camps and into prisons alongside adult ISIS suspects. Kurdish authorities, who do not operate an internationally recognized justice system, have for years urged countries to repatriate their citizens and provide legal processes and rehabilitation. “We did your duty, we managed to bring them to this stage, and now it’s their duty for all the countries to bring back their citizens,” Afrin says.
Few Western countries have accepted large numbers of returnees. Russia, Kazakhstan and some other eastern European states repatriated many nationals; Western nations have been much more reluctant. The U.S. had relatively few citizens join ISIS compared with other countries; European repatriations have ranged from a few dozen to a few hundred in countries such as France. National approaches vary widely, and many governments characterize potential returnees as security risks.
Camp administrators and aid groups warn of the long-term humanitarian and security consequences if detainees remain in limbo. With limited de-radicalization programs, disrupted aid, and little legal infrastructure, the future of children raised in such camps is especially uncertain. Kurdish-run facilities have been a stopgap for years; as control and alliances in Syria shift, those running the camps say the responsibility for processing and reintegrating foreign nationals now rests with their countries of origin.